TGIF.......

I do like Friday's! Phil has weekends off so it is nice to have the weekend together and we often get tasks done around the house and try to do some kind of activity or outing with the kids. 
I stayed in bed this morning.......I had to be up and out so early the last couple of days I needed a
lay-in.  I have taken to pinterest (cherrypop66) and online shopping! OMG! This cancer vacation is going to cost me a fortune! I'm actually not that bad, but I imaginary buy lots of stuff, and if I was thin....oh dear, I would have so many new outfits! I think that's why pinterest is a good thing, I can just pin it to a board instead of "adding it to cart!"
I went for Baan Thai for lunch, delicious! Apparently you can have "chemo cravings", kinda like pregnancy cravings I guess, I haven't had any weird ones, like pickles with peanut butter, I just want specific foods that I love.  It's a whole lot better than throwing up, that's for sure!
All in all a good day.
A huge thank you to angel Tricia, and the Smith family for the fabulous Japanese chicken dinner last night.  Deeeelicious!

Feel so loved.....

So it has been a couple of days since I have posted, I've been really tired by about 18:00 which is when I usually write.
So where did we leave off?  Wednesday night.....going to the Surgeon's office for porta cath insertion consult in the AM.

Thursday Jan 17 - Dr. Hiyashi, general surgeon appt 08:30!! OMG is that ever early to get up, get the kids out the door and get accross town to the jubilee.  My angel husband Phil, managed to get everyone organized and we were in the car enroute in fairly good time.

We ended up waiting an hour to see the Doc, not surprising, but he was lovely and took one look at my veins in my arms, laughed out loud, and said I'll get you in ASAP.  A port a catheter is a centrally inserted catheter in your upper chest into a central vein. It will allow for drugs & IV fluids to be given and lab work to be drawn very easily.  I am a "tough stick" with my "skinny" veins!
By the time I got home from the appointment I had an email with my date of surgery Jan 30/13.  So this is GOOD! It will delay my chemo by one day but that is not the end of the world, they can delay chemo up to one week if necessary and your bloodwork is good.
The rest of the day was good, the home lab came and sucked out some more blood, I'm a bit of a pin cushion, but it was non-eventful.
I went out with Auntie for lunch, I had a craving for pizzeria prima strada (I'll write about this in my food blog) it did not disappoint. 
I got a bit weak and tired by about 14:30 while we were at Thrifty's so she dropped me off and I came home and sat on the couch and watched Ellen.
At 16:00 goddess Emily arrived with a full on chicken dinner with all the fixings & dessert too! She had told me the day before she was bringing it so I was so thankful I didn't have to cook tonight.  Well, were we ever spoiled it was amazing and we enjoyed it thoroughly. Thank you so much Singh Family!
At 17:00, her loveliness Monique came over with more dessert (ice cream & brownies) and enjoyed our chicken dinner with us, cleaned up, did homework with Stella and Vinnie and then rubbed my head and gave me an amazing shoulder and neck massage.......seriously.....I thought I had died and gone to heaven!  It's amazing how much negative energy I'm carrying even though I try really hard to be limber.
The evening was great and I was exhausted and we all went to bed with our bellies full and feeling very loved!

I made it a whole week! Well sort of.....

Well all was going swimmingly well up until 19:30 last night. I mean I was almost feeling too good! I jinxed myself...BOOOOO!
I took my neupogen shots at 17:00 as per usual (these are the ones that are to boost my white blood cells(WBC) to fight infection off) they go by injection into my belly x2, I have been taking them since day 3 post chemo.  The side effects of this drug is bone pain, because what it is doing is creating a whack load of new WBC's which are literally churning through your bone marrow. 

You have the most bone marrow in your lower back, hips, and femur bones. So at 19:30 the neupogen side effects reared their ugly heads and I ended up in writhing agony in my lower back not able to sit, lie down, walk....nothing it was horrendous! So I had some pain medication (Dilaudid)  that was prescribed to me on Monday while I was at the hospital for the allergic reaction and swollen neck, so I took the recommended dose. It did nothing! Didn't even touch it.  By 02:30am I called the oncologist on-call and he upped the dose significantly and told me to take it every hour until the pain was under control......well that was 10mg of dilaudid later and 05:30 I finally fell asleep.

I had 3 calls from the cancer agency yesterday. Two were follow up calls re:how was I doing with my allergic symptoms from Monday and what they wanted me to do to keep them under control. Then at 17:00 I got a call to come into the cancer agency for today because my blood work was showing significantly low WBC and neutrophil and platelette counts. So Dr. Battersill who saw me Monday, wanted to reassess me and do another set of bloodwork.

I had to get up to the hospital today this morning for that follow up visit and lab work and in the meantime this neupogen reaction in my back had happened! It's really a minute to minute deal.

What's the verdict?  Well both Dr. Battersill (General Practicioner ONC) and Dr. Bernstein, oncologist both saw me today and discussed what the future chemo treatments will look like.  They stopped the neupogen shots immediately for the remainder of this cycle (which means I miss 2 doses) and they have put me on Cipro (an antibiotic) to keep me from getting infection.  Dr. Bernstein still feels this "cocktail" of chemo is the right one for me, and stated how badly she felt that I had been through everything and was very reassuring that she had no intensions of my treatment to continue with all these issues! She is going to reduce my chemo dose to 80% of the protocol and she says the efficiacy will stay the same (meaning it is still worth it to do it) and hopefully this will be the solution.
So I slept all afternoon, as I had no sleep for 2 nights, and have been up to have dinner and seem to be in the land of the living.  Here's hoping for a better day tomorrow.......I have my consult with
Dr. Hiyashi for my porta catheter (permanent central catheter) insertion and they are having home labs come to my house to take lab work tomorrow.

Sorry no cupcakes to report, it all sounds a little depressing, but I'm going to be ok, it's just a process.  One day at a time!  x0x

Almost a week post round 1chemo!

GOOOOD day today!  Well, as some of you may have seen I was up all night and created another new blog, I am really loving this blogging thing, and was as high as a kite on dexamethasone steroids due to my "lasting" allergic reaction to my chemo drugs.  So no sleep last night, but got tonnes done and feel very productive.
I even sewed a tablecloth this morning and started making "booby" bags for the breast health centre at VGH.  The "booby" bags are a savour to anyone having had breast surgery, they go under your arm and keeps your arm from rubbing against your body.  Mine was permanently attached to me for over 4 weeks, it was kinda disgusting at times!
I bought myself a serger and a sewing machine as a feel sorry for myself present when I was diagnosed and they are coming in really handy...stay tuned for some awsome future projects I'm gonna pump out!  Pink Popcorn is just getting started!
So where am I at, so the cancer clinic called this morning to follow up on me, I am to take claritin during the day for this allergic remnant nonsense and benadryl at night. No more steroids, for the meantime, so maybe sleepy town for me tonight, and I am to take just my normal anti nauseant rescue drug and my daily white blood cell booster neupogen shot in the bellyx2 for another 5 days.
 
So went to Japanese Village for lunch, yes, I did 2 bowls of rice with steak sauce and had the teryaki salmon, yummo!
I would say a good day all in all........we'll see what tomorrow is gonna bring!

BBQ pork chops with baked potatoes in the oven with garden salad for dinner, who's having chemo??

Baby steps .....

So what are we now..day 5/6 post 1st chemo. Seems way longer than that....that I can assure you of. I spent today at BCCA (BC Cancer Agency) in the triage area in a nice room on a stretcher for most of the day.  Turns out, me and 2 of the chemo drugs I'm taking don't get a long so well. 
One being the cyclophosphamide (which when you think about it just sounds like poison) is making me vomit and nauseous.  The second, Docetaxel, I am allergic to which I had a massive reaction on the day I went for the intial dose, it seems it is lingering around now and having a "lasting" effect on me.  Fantastic!
So I woke up this morning feeling like my throat was closing in, my tounge was like a wet sponge and my neck was seizing up like nothing I've ever felt before.  Holy....seriously.....well I called BCCA and they had me come in right away...again fantastic medical team.
So on went the big girl undies and off to the cancer agency we went.  We, being Phil and I.  They started another IV, my favourite, you know what they tell me....I have "skinny" veins.....see I knew I was skinny somewhere inside this big body of mine! So needless to say, it was a couple of tries for the IV and some more pokes to get lab work and in went some fluids and medications. 
I was successfully in sleepy town, population 1. 

So on goes my trials as a chemotherapy patient, but as they say I'm in it to win it now....so bring it on!

Day 3-4 post chemo - round 1

So nothing good to say at all. Yesterday (Friday) I started getting pains in my lower body through my hips knees and ankles. It's a side effect of the chemo drugs but oh my god it is awful.it moves through what feels like my muscles and through my feet ......it's like a flu ache x 100! I can't walk or support my body weight so it's difficult to get around.
I went to bed with a dose of Tylenol and that was all I could have. I'm off the 3 day prescribed anti- nauseates and only have a rescue pill for nausea.  Well at 4 am all hell broke loose and I was in a mess. Nauseated on the toilet...a real pretty picture i know....but agonizing pain in my lower body.....holy hell.....
I woke up this morning and called the doctor to see what I could do it was unbearable by this point. She was nice and gave me some orders to take some more anti- nauseant and steroid and I could take Advil for the body pain instead of Tylenol. Thank god!
I'm not nauseated right now, I sat outside and watched Vinnie ride his bike for a bit to take in some sunshine.
That's about all I can muster up the energy to do today.......better day tomorrow hopefully.

1st day after Chemo round 1

So I was up all night!  I am taking 2 kinds of very powerful anti-nausea medications and 1 steroid drug to keep me from hanging all day with my head in the toilet!  Well, it's working......the only downside is the steroid is keeping me pretty full of energy! I'll take no sleep anyday over throwing up! So working on 4 hours sleep...if you know me, that's no where near enough for me, I'm a minimum 8hour girl!

So today I headed out with Auntie to Costco! Boy oh boy, I usually go through Costco in the normal fashion of following the "loop" not today I must of zig zagged back and forth from one side of the store to the other like a ping pong ball! Auntie was having a hard time keeping up! 
I told her going in, I'm no where near rational today don't let me make any uneccessary purchases...overall pretty good only a $90 bill....not a bad day.  A new duvet cover was the only "bonus item" I got......
Came home to a secret prezzie of Red & White roses with 2 huge Cadbury's chocolate bars.  I later identified the giver, my lovely friend Emily

I had a hot bath at 4pm and climbed into my freshly made bed and was gone instantly! I crashed and burned. I woke up 3 hours later, had some dinner (home made soup.)
So overall, good day. No nausea/vomitting which is my biggest fear. Just hopped up on steroids and a few other little things.
Hope you all had a good day too! x0x C.